Construction professionals generally use computer software programs to provide pricing for and manage the construction of large construction projects. Some of these construction software programs include capabilities for drawing or uploading construction plans and/or architectural drawings. The software programs may enable a user to enter a list of building conditions that are required to be completed for a given construction project. The term building condition refers to each separate component of the construction project that needs to be built or installed. For example, the ceiling, exterior structure, doors, or a particular type of wall are all considered building conditions. As building conditions are entered, a user can create live objects on the construction drawings, where the live objects are linked to and represent particular building conditions. This process is sometimes referred to as takeoff. Once takeoff of building conditions is complete, the resulting software file would quantify building conditions and could be used to calculate a projected cost for the entire project and thus help create a bid for it. Such a file can also be used to track and manage the project once a bid is accepted and work on the project begins.
Often one of the first steps in creating a project in a construction software program is to upload architectural drawing or images that have already been created by an architect for the project. Large construction projects generally include tens of pages of drawings. Managing these pages of drawings is a cumbersome task. This task is made even more difficult because of constant changes that can be made to the drawings. Sometimes during the bidding process or after a bid has been accepted, an owner or project manager requests changes. For example, the size of a room may need to change, more rooms may need to be added, or the size of a window or the height of a ceiling portion may need to change.
These architectural changes generally result in revised versions of the original drawings, thus creating multiple versions of drawings. Keeping track of the various versions of the drawings, the differences between them and which drawing is the latest version in a group of corresponding drawings is essential to proper management of a construction project. However, as a project's size and complexity increases, keeping track of the various versions of the drawings becomes increasingly more difficult.
Thus, it would be desirable to implement an efficient method for management and viewing of drawings in a construction project software program.